RachelB Wrote:It's also pretty common for America to be used to refer to the continent too. And by the continent, i mean either the single continent Amerca, in places where north and south america are not distinguished, or one and/or the other, in places where it is.
The proper term you're looking for in English is the Americas (America is more of a shorthanded version). Although it is most commonly used to speak about North and South America, some people do use the Americas to refer to either one (yes, despite the plural suffix). Other more proper terms are Western Hemisphere (usually referring to both, sometimes just North America given its development), Latin America (generally Mexico and anything south), and North America.
RachelB Wrote:No need to get shocked and offended every time a word has more than one meaning. "America" can correctly refer to either the country, or the continent(s).
No one in that thread was "shocked" or "offended" other than kinkinkijkin. It had one meaning to him, his was just not the most common usage of "America" in English (the usage Anti-Ultimate used), and therefore started a discussion that was worthy of Random instead of a thread about social media and Dolphin.
RachelB Wrote:Furthermore, mentioning historical linguistics is incredibly silly, because it's never relevant to current linguistics. Language changes constantly.
That's laughably incorrect. Where do you think our current usages of language come from? Nowhere? Language doesn't just change,
it evolves, and it has to evolve from
something. The fact of the matter is that "America" has been used in English to commonly refer to the USA for decades. Its persistence over time gives us a clue as to why we use it today, and it's better evidence of why I can say "America" to an English speaking counterpart and be assured that they'll recognize I'm talking about my country, the US. You honestly can't look at modern usages of language without looking where they've come from and how, over time, people did or didn't change their usage. If what you say is true, we would have no need for studying etymology, or even caring about it.
RachelB Wrote:And i can assure you, people are using America to refer to the continent today. I've seen this silly argument 100 times before now.
Read what I wrote again carefully. I never refuted that America has multiple meanings. I am educating kinkinkijkin that the common usage of "America" in English will more often than not refer to the USA. It's not an argument that "America" has an absolute meaning. That's why wikipedia has to
disambiguate it for you (and no surprise, the first two are for the common English usage and the reference to the continents). The debate was whether or not "America" could correctly refer to the USA (which someone had a problem with
here, even though it can refer to the USA. The debate touched on whether it can correctly refer to continents and which ones (and in that regard kinkinkijkin is still wrong, having said "America" cannot refer to continents).